On September, 29, 2010, at the Valley Presbyterian Church in Portola Valley, CA, Other Minds presented the second of two concerts dedicated to the music of composer, author, astrologer, painter, and philosopher, Dane Rudhyar. A true Renaissance man, Dane Rudhyar was born in Paris France in 1895, studied briefly at the Paris Conservatoire, and published his first musical compositions, as well as a book on Claude Debussy, by 1913. In 1916, in a move that he compared to going to the moon, or like a seed cast upon the winds of time, Rudhyar came to the United States where he eventually settled down in California. Throughout the 1920s and 30s Rudhyar continued to compose avant-garde music including scores for plays, ritual dances, and radical “multimedia” performances. However with the advent of the Great Depression, Rudhyar found less support for his type of experimental music, so he began to dedicate more time to his poetry, painting and philosophical writings on astrology and psychology. Beginning in the 1970s, as his writings were gaining popularity among the youth, Rudhyar returned to musical composition, producing a series of piano and orchestral works while also continuing to give lectures, making art, and writing books, right up until his death in 1985 at the age of 90.

These video hightlights from the concert begins with the first of Rudhyar’s three “Poems” for violin and piano, performed by David Abel and Julie Steinberg. This is followed by he Ives String Quartet performing “Crisis & Overcoming,” which was originally composed in 1979, and with its salute to European culture perhaps represents the culminating cycle of Rudhyar’s career.


This movie is part of the collection: Other Minds Video Archive

Producer: Other Minds
Audio/Visual: sound, color
Keywords: Other Minds; Dane Rudhyar; Music; New Music; Chamber Music; 20th Century Classical; String Quartets
Contact Information: For more detailed program information and to browse other material in the Other Minds Archive visit: <a href="http://radiom.org">radiOM.org</a>

Creative Commons license: Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0

Be the first to write a review
Streamed 759 times Reviews

Credits

Ellen Shershaw Peña, videographer